


All Paths Lead Here

by QueenOfTheWesternSky



Category: The Amazing Spider-Man (Movies - Webb)
Genre: F/M, Introspection, Post-TASM2, Spoilers for TASM2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-20
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 21:15:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1662707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfTheWesternSky/pseuds/QueenOfTheWesternSky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Then and there, he doesn’t realise that he’s going to be waiting for the rest of his life for her. Not yet.</p><p>He will soon enough though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Paths Lead Here

_Time is luck._

Time is something he clearly hasn’t got, not now. By the time there are sirens moving toward him, he’s still cradling her in his arms, willing her to wake up, to open those bright eyes of her, some witty quip tumbling from her lips, he waits. Then and there, he doesn’t realise that he’s going to be waiting for the rest of his life for her. Not yet.

He will soon enough though.

The sirens are getting closer and he know he can’t be here when they arrive. He can’t watch them put her in one of those awful black bags and cart her away, he can’t watch them lock Harry up--or rather, the  _thing_ that used to be Harry. He can’t watch as strangers take away two more lost souls that still held pieces of his heart in their hands.

Leaving her lying there almost kills him. He does it because he has to, and he’d say it broke his heart, but he knows that’s already broken--shattered into a million pieces the moment she hit the ground. He tells himself he’ll go home, go to Aunt May, because she always knew what to say to make everything  _better._

Because he needs to believe that it’s going to get better.

Instead he perches himself nearby, not looking, but listening. He hears them declare her legally dead, and he hears Harry be arrested, cackling in a way that unsettles Peter Parker to his very core. And he hates every second of it, but he can’t bring himself to  _move_. He spends the night in that same perch, crying and screaming and trying to come up with something coherent--something he could say to plead with whatever god truly existed to give her back to him, but he can’t. Everything aches too much for  _words_ ,  and every time he tries to open his mouth, the only thing that escapes it is an agonising wail.

By morning, the whole city knows of what happened between Spiderman and the  _creature_ the press is calling “The Green Goblin”, and they know of the girl found at the bottom of the clocktower, the former police chief’s daughter who was laid down carefully, her hands folded neatly on her stomach--beautiful even now.

He walks home while it’s still early and finds Aunt May sitting there, his suit hidden under layers of clothing, but the mask still clutched in his hands as he collapses on the floor of their living room, his head in her lap as he weeps once again, and he doesn’t think there will ever be anything other than this--this is what the future is, an agonising wait with a hole in his chest where his heart had been before he’d handed it over to her for safe keeping. Something else that had died at the bottom of the clocktower.

If Aunt May see’s the mask clutched in his bruised hands, she doesn’t say anything, and he’s grateful either way.

He falls into a state of silence until the funeral, where he doesn’t allow himself to stand with the rest of them--Gwen’s family, her friends, her colleagues, all the people whose lives she had touched and it occurs to him then that people can call him a hero all they want, but he’ll never do what she did. No one will ever be able to do what Gwen Stacy did, the world is poorer without her, even if it doesn’t know it yet.

He cannot be hope if he has none himself, and so the suit stays hidden in his closet and all path’s lead to her. No matter where he goes or what he does, he ends up standing there, staring down at her name, carved into marble, a grotesque few words to describe all she was and it’s not enough. Entire libraries could be filled with words to describe Gwen Stacy, to describe her smile, and her laugh, to describe all she’d achieved and all she was going to achieve.

Unfair doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Unfair is small and insignificant, this is a cosmic failure--the universe failing to stop the greatest of calamities,  _him_ being unable to stop the world from falling to pieces.

Time goes on, and there’s still a gaping hole in his chest. It doesn’t hurt any less, and he still wakes up some mornings, planning his entire day around her before he remembers that she isn’t there. The suit remains untouched and all path’s still lead to her.

Seasons change, but nothing else does--or maybe it’s just him that doesn’t. The world wants back the source of hope he stole from them--but only because his own was stolen too. The people chant the name of their supposed savior and he feels something other than grief; obligation.

The city regains it’s hope, but he doesn’t, no, instead he once again wanders to that insufficient marker of her with the suit tucked under his clothing and realises that all path’s will always lead him there, lead him to her, because she  was  his path, a path that has reached a dead end and has him walking in circles, only to end right back where he started.

The world keeps spinning, and he pretends to be spinning with it, continuing to follow a path that is no longer there to be followed.

**Author's Note:**

> I had a lot of feelings about Peter and Gwen, hence this nonsense.


End file.
